Sunday, July 12, 2015

My Book on Nigerian English is Finally Out!

Hundreds of readers who appreciate the insights I
share weekly on this page have, for years, prodded me to write a book on
Nigerian English and its place in the pantheon of the world’s “Englishes.” I
listened. For three years, I edited, rewrote, and expanded several articles
that first appeared here into a book.

After writing the book, the next challenge was finding
a suitable publisher. Should I publish it in Nigeria, which would make it easily
accessible to Nigerians? Or should I publish it in the United States, which
would limit its access in Nigeria but would ensure that it is of high quality—and
that it benefits my career growth? With a lot of reluctance, I chose the
latter. What informed my choice?

As many readers
of this column know, I am a university teacher at an American university. If I
must get credit for my hard work, I have to be published by a reputable
academic publisher (in America). That means I must publish the book with an
academic publisher that will send my manuscript first to an internal board of
expert reviewers and later to at least three experts in the (American) academe who
must critique and approve it before a decision about publication can be made.
(In American academe, you don’t get credit for self-publishing or for
publishing with vanity presses).

Since the death of Longman Nigeria, there have been no
academic publishers in Nigeria worth the name. There are only mercantile
printers who fancy themselves as publishers. So I practically had no option but
to publish my book in America.

My manuscript was submitted to and accepted by Peter
Lang Publishing Inc., a well-known international academic publisher with
offices in New York, Bern, Brussels, Frankfurt, Oxford, Vienna, and Warsaw. The
book was officially released in June this year and sells in all major American
bookstores. Unfortunately, my publisher has no representative in Nigeria.

And this strikes at the core of the knotty, abiding
contradictions of the scholarly production of Third World intellectuals located
in the West. We produce knowledge about our home countries in Western centers
of learning. Our scholarly output then enjoys high social and symbolic capital
because it is vetted and circulated in the West, but the people about and for
whom the scholarship is done have only marginal or no access to it. This is
personally distressing to me, but I am helpless.

The good news, though, is that the book can be bought on
Amazon.com by following this link: I have confirmed that Amazon accepts Nigerian debit cards and ships to Nigerian
addresses. It costs $81 on Amazon, $89 on Peter Lang’s website, and $81 on Barns & Noble.
A Nigerian banker friend has this advice for people who want to purchase the
book from American online bookstores using their debit cards: “You need to
request debit card concession from your bank to use most banks' debit card on
the web. So if you have challenges in using the card on the web, contact your
bank for advice.”

I admit that the book is rather pricey and beyond the
reach of the average Nigerian, especially with the continuing free fall of the
naira against the dollar. Again, while this really and truly saddens me, I
can’t do anything about it. The publisher alone fixes the price based on the
cost they incurred in the production of the book. My sense is that the book is
that expensive because it is a hardcover edition that is targeted primarily at
institutional libraries.

My acquisition editor assured me that after the first
500 copies of the book are sold, Peter Lang would consider publishing a
paperback edition, which would be much cheaper than the hardcover edition. So
my advice is that people who can’t afford the hardcover should encourage their
libraries to buy it—if they have libraries.

Please see below the synopsis and reviews of the book
taken straight from Peter Lang’s website and from the back and inside covers of
the book:

Book synopsis

Glocal English compares
the usage patterns and stylistic conventions of the world’s two dominant native
varieties of English (British and American English) with Nigerian English,
which ranks as the English world’s fastest-growing non-native variety courtesy
of the unrelenting ubiquity of the Nigerian (English-language) movie industry
in Africa and the Black Atlantic Diaspora. Using contemporary examples from the
mass media and the author’s rich experiential data, the book isolates the
peculiar structural, grammatical, and stylistic characteristics of Nigerian
English and shows its similarities as well as its often humorous differences
with British and American English. Although Nigerian English forms the backdrop
of the book, it will benefit teachers of English as a second or foreign language
across the world. Similarly, because it presents complex grammatical concepts
in a lucid, personal narrative style, it is useful both to a general and a
specialist audience, including people who study anthropology and globalization.
The true-life experiential encounters that the book uses to instantiate the
differences and similarities between Nigerian English and native varieties of
English will make it valuable as an empirical data mine for disciplines that
investigate the movement and diffusion of linguistic codes across the bounds of
nations and states in the age of globalization.

About the author(s)/editor(s)

Farooq A. Kperogi is Assistant Professor of Journalism
in the Department of Communication at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. A
former Nigerian newspaper journalist, he received his PhD in communication from
Georgia State University, Atlanta, his MS in communication from the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette, and his BA in mass communication from Bayero
University, Kano, Nigeria. During his doctoral studies, he won the Outstanding
Academic Achievement Award. He also won the Outstanding Master’s Student in
Communication Award at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and the
Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student in Mass
Communication at Bayero University, Kano. He is published widely and blogs at www.farooqkperogi.com.

Reviews

«What is wonderful about Professor Kperogi’s book is
its erudition, its no-nonsense approach, and its familiar language. In other
words, the reader is in for a treat…. [F]or many of us who thought we knew what
‘English’ meant, reading this book will teach us not only how language works
and how English has changed, but about its speakers in Nigeria, their world,
and the world of how they talk to each other. The British and American reader
should emerge somewhat humbled by this process, and the Nigerian reader perhaps
very satisfied over what marvels have been created in his or her own homeland.
»
(Extract from the Foreword by Kenneth
Harrow, Distinguished Professor of English, Michigan State University, United
States)

«This delightful book by Farooq A. Kperogi gives a comprehensive overview of
the peculiarities of the meaning and usage of words and phrases in Nigerian
English. It contains numerous examples and demonstrates through comparisons
with American and British English how the Nigerian variety of English has
developed its own distinct vocabulary and rules of usage. Moreover, it traces
general mechanisms of change in meaning and usage in these three varieties of
English. Written in a highly accessible style that is at the same time
entertaining and instructive, this book is a very enjoyable read for both
scholars and non-linguists interested in Nigerian English and varieties of
English as a whole.»
(Ulrike Gut, Professor and Chair for
English Linguistics, University of Münster, Germany)

«Glocal English is a brilliant and provocative exploration of
several intriguing dimensions in the grammar of Nigerian English, one of the
‘Englishes’ fathered by British English. This new English is struggling against
many unavoidable odds and influences to secure its legitimacy and respect,
uncertain whether to disown the norms of an uncomfortable parent and of
‘caregivers,’ but willing to be (mis)understood in the global centres of
English language use. Farooq A. Kperogi provides deep and admirable insights
into the slippery borders separating usage from abusage and errors of
construction from terrors of construction. The book, which has emerged from his
famous ‘Politics of Grammar’ column, is a restless hound that must keep an eye
on the game. It is impossible to ignore this book in both popular and
intellectual discourses on the changing colours of English. It is highly
recommended for courses in world Englishes, particularly Nigerian English.»
(Obododimma Oha, Professor of Cultural
Semiotics and Stylistics, Department of English, University of Ibadan, Nigeria)

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.